


Hot Scary Summer

by thewindupbird



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-24 22:14:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14963178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewindupbird/pseuds/thewindupbird
Summary: The boys hunt some ghosts, make some impulsive choices, and try their best to sort out what it means to get to the heart of this thing.





	1. February

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction and is in no way meant to depict the real lives of any persons involved.
> 
> This comes from a place of love. Let's boogie, boys!

_'Cause this shouldn't be hard work_  
_At least not the kind that makes us_  
_Half a person, half a monster_  
_Stuck together in this hot, scary summer_  
_Oh, Lord..._  
_Hot, scary summer_

\- Villagers, _Hot Scary Summer_

 

 **February**  
  
All things considered, Ryan thinks, later, that finding a ghost would have been more likely than what actually happened.  
  
They were loading up the car in the peculiar dark of quarter to six in the morning, in February, in Wisconsin, which Ryan feels like he knows intimately now, having spent the last three freezing nights here filming two separate episodes of Unsolved.  
  
He wants to leave.  
  
He’s tired. They’re all tired. They have a flight back to Los Angeles tomorrow morning which means they’ve been stuck in Wisconsin Friday and Saturday, and will then be wasting all of Sunday in airports or on airplanes. He’s letting himself be mad about it. When they get back to the motel he will shower and be mad about it, and then he’ll see if he can make the kettle work and try to make the best of it because if there’s anything worse than being miserable about something alone, it’s being miserable about something alongside Shane being miserable about the same thing, and neither of them doing anything about it.  
  
He hops into the driver’s seat and blasts the heat, rubbing his hands together to warm them, shivering bodily. A second later, the trunk slams shut and Shane joins him up front with a clipped “Fuck. S’cold!”  
  
“Is it?” Ryan asks, sarcastically. “I didn’t notice. The snow didn’t tip me off at all.”  
  
Shane chuckles a little, then reaches past Ryan to tap the horn, signalling to TJ and the others in the car ahead that they’re all set. Ryan, who’s just pushed his hands into his sleeves groans, because at least his forearms are warm, somehow, but his fingers feels like they’re about to fall off. So do his toes. These are definitely not winter boots.  
  
TJ’s taillights illuminate the snow, then pull away and Shane suggests for the tenth time that morning that he can drive, and for the first time that morning Ryan wants to take him up on it, but that would mean getting out of the car again, and he doesn’t want to do _that_.  
  
Shane’s got his hands between his thighs, shoulders hunched. Even with the heat on, Ryan can see their breath in the car. Ryan gives one more vocalized, full-bodied shudder, then grabs hold of the icy steering wheel and pulls out after the others. He should have gotten tea or something. Anything hot. He fights the urge to pull his sweater sleeves down over his fingers, but that’s not safe.  
  
“Text the guys and say pull into the next McDonald's,” Ryan says and Shane lifts his hips to fish his phone from his pocket to do it.  
  
“Devon says ‘great plan,’” Shane informs him, followed by “You want music?” He’s lit from the glow of his phone as he scrolls through his music. It’s the weird yellow light that’s supposed to help you sleep better or whatever, and it makes the red plaid of Shane’s shirt look brown. Something soft and acoustic filters out through the speakers.  
  
“Not conducive to keeping me awake,” Ryan says.  
  
“You don’t like Villagers?” Shane asks and makes no move to change it. “I’m not awake enough for anything you want to put on.”  
  
“If you fall asleep,” Ryan says, “I’m going to unbuckle your seatbelt, open your door, push you out, and not even stop driving.”  
  
Shane’s laughing silently and Ryan sort of wants to punch him and sort of wants to keep watching him. Shane’s kind of got fucked up teeth. Ryan hates that Shane can have fucked up teeth and still look good. Weird definitely, but…  
  
Or maybe it’s the weird that makes it. But no, he knows it’s not that either. It’s the fact that Shane acts like he knows he can command a room, acts like he knows he can look good even when his hair looks like a rat’s nest and he could’ve used braces as a kid — it’s all confidence and bravado, and sometimes Ryan isn’t sure Shane really feels it or not. And Ryan slides his tongue over the roof of his own mouth and thinks about how different it feels from the smooth plastic of his retainer which he still has to fucking wear at night, at twenty-eight goddamn years old. He thinks about the rough metal snag of the braces he wore all through junior high school and he thinks about Shane’s fucked up teeth and feels something twist strangely in his stomach.  
  
Yeah. Some things just aren’t fair.  
  
_We got good at pretending, then pretending got us good_  
_We’ve always been up against it_  
_But now it’s sad to see, we’re up against each other_  
_In this hot scary summer_  
_Oh, Lord… hot scary summer._  
  
“You listen to some weird music, dude.”  
  
“Sorry, I don’t have any hiphop on here at _all_ ,” Shane says, sounding sincere which means he isn’t. Ryan stops harder than he has to at a red light that the others made it though. They’re alone on the road, and up ahead there is the promising glow of the McDonald's yellow arches, like a strange nightly mirage, and that’s where the other car pulls in.  
  
The light in the car shifts as Shane holds his phone out to Ryan, and Ryan takes it without even thinking, starts scrolling through Shane’s music. “I don’t even know who ninety percent of these bands are,” he says.  
  
“Just pick one,” Shane says. Ryan glances up, and their eyes meet as the last lyrics of the song draw themselves out, gentle and slow, and Ryan is reminded of cassette wheels spinning, and the delicate brown tape and the feeling of it, filmy, between his fingers. He thinks about winding it back into the cassette with HB pencils and wonders why Shane’s eyes and Shane’s stupid face remind him of all these tactile things from childhood.  
  
And that’s what he’s thinking about — how you don’t see cassette tape film webbed and glimmering over bushes on the side of the road anymore — when Shane leans across the console and kisses him.  
  
Shane kisses him on the mouth and it is surprisingly warm and Ryan can’t even make the noise that catches in his throat. For a moment, between songs, there is silence, just the soft hum of the car, and jesus, that’s Shane’s tongue against his top lip. It’s quiet enough that Ryan can hear the soft, intimate sound of their mouths sliding together as he opens his and, for a second, Shane’s tongue skims the sharp edge of Ryan’s front teeth, and then it slides softly, lightly against Ryan’s own.  
  
The music shifts to something different, a strum of guitar, soft rhythmic drums. It jolts him despite its softness. Ryan drops Shane’s phone and it clatters against the console. Shane pulls away with a startled hiss. The whole thing lasted about three seconds. The light is green. How long has it been green? Thank God there’s no cars behind them.  
  
Ryan watches Shane touch his lips for a split second with his fingertips, then ask, without quite meeting Ryan’s eyes: “Did you drop my phone?” and it’s just accusing enough to shock Ryan into action. He twists a shoulder between the console and the wheel and fishes it from the floor and slams it into the cup holder.  
  
“S… Dude—” Ryan starts.  
  
Shane’s looking straight ahead. Softly he says, “Light’s green now.” There’s nothing to do but drive.  So, okay, they don’t say anything, but the silence between them is stretching thin and thinner, despite the music. Shane kissed him. That’s what Ryan’s thinking. His mind sort of screams it, loud and distorted like the spirit box.  
  
The thirty or so yards to the McDonald's feels _endless_ and they follow the others out and into the fluorescent-lit restaurant which is 24 hours but, for some reason, doesn’t have a drive-thru, and it feels a little surreal — like something out of Night Vale, or maybe that’s just the fact that Ryan can still feel the heat of Shane’s lips against his.  
  
And that’s definitely _weird_. Right? That’s what this feeling is? Weirdness?  
  
Shane’s sidled up to Devon, talking about whether or not it’s gross to dip your fries into your milkshake and Ryan’s left sort of hovering behind their little group. He watches Shane for a second, but it goes unnoticed, so he looked away, eyes unfocused and staring into some middle distance because it suddenly feels like too much to look at Shane.  
  
This, he thinks, must be what ghosts feel like. Unnoticed. And it’s wildly jarring because Ryan doesn’t think it’s normal to feel unnoticed by someone who’s just leaned across the front seat of a car and, out of nowhere, kissed you, point blank.  
  
Like, there was no way that was a mistake.  
  
Right? No one _accidentally_ kisses someone on the mouth, do they? Not in real life.  
  
“Ryan,” TJ nudges his shoulder and Ryan jumps. “You sleeping, man?” TJ laughs, nodding towards the counter. “You’re up.”  
  
Five minutes later, they’re piling back into cars again and he catches Shane’s eyes as they both do up their seatbelts and it sends something sparking through him like a live wire snapping against his spine.  
  
“I’m— you okay?” Shane asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan says, fast. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”  
  
Something flickers in Shane’s eyes, something soft and startled, and then it’s gone — winking out like a light. “I don’t— I think that was going to be a bit? I’m very tired.”  
  
Ryan stutters a few non-words and then, smiling because it feels better, because he doesn’t know what the hell else to do, he says “Kissing me was a bit?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Shane says, and he’s not having any trouble holding Ryan’s eyes and Ryan hates him gently for it.  
  
 “I think so?” Shane ventures.  
  
“You _think_ so?” His smile’s starting to fade, he can feel it, but he doesn’t know what’s trying to replace it on his face, either, and that’s more alarming than the kiss.  
  
“Yeah, you know,” Shane begins, and his voice sounds too loud in the car, and he’s looking away now, and Ryan’s back to being aware of that jittery, sparking feeling inside him. “Like when you know there’s a pun there, but you can’t quite reach it? I thought I— I don’t know. I think it was going to be… funny. Jesus. That sounds…”  
  
“Bad.”  
  
“Yes.” Shane swallows. “I didn’t mean funny like that. Look, can we just get to the motel? I’m about to shiver out of my bones, here.”  
  
 “Think we can make it without you accidentally groping me as a bit?” Ryan asks, turning the car back on.  
  
Shane exhales a breath like a laugh, but doesn’t even bother to smile. His eyes are searching for something in the darkness beyond the windshield, beyond the headlights, and Ryan doesn’t fucking get it.  
  
In the motel, Shane’s out of his coat and boots and into the bathroom faster than Ryan can even shrug out of his jacket. He half expects to hear him puking in there with the urgency behind his movements, but all he gets is the shower running after about thirty seconds.  
  
So that leaves Ryan to dump the coffee that he realizes now he didn’t want down the kitchenette sink and climb onto the bed furthest from the door to flick on the TV. And he lets himself be pissed at Shane for getting into the warm shower and probably using most of the hot water without even asking if he could go first and angry at the fact that they always share a room, and angry at the fact that he wants something hot or alcoholic to drink, and there’s neither.  
  
He thinks about going back out to get a case of beer (thereby avoiding Shane when he finally gets out) but that would mean putting all his winter gear back on _and_ going back outside, so he doesn’t. Instead he uses the reassurance of the sound of running water to know he’s got time to drag himself up off the bed and change into the shirt and sweats he’ll sleep in.  
  
He starts thinking that the best thing to do will probably be to pretend it never happened. It was just a weird thing. A glitch in the fabric of the universe. Ryan believes in ghosts, he believes in weird things like universe glitches — it’s a big place. A big… weird, organic mainframe. Lots of room for something to go wrong. Only it felt very real and, somehow, very… Shane. And Ryan half thinks that something in this should have been obvious to him, but he doesn’t know what. Nothing’s changed between them, not that he’s noticed. Everything’s the same as it’s always been and he thinks that if he wants to keep it that way, pretending nothing happened should be the best option.  
  
Shane’s in the shower for so long Ryan’s about to get up to ask him if he’s died in there, when the water shuts off and Ryan hears him cursing softly and he emerges a few seconds later in only a towel in time to snatch up his bag and say “Oops,” and disappear again.  
  
Ryan takes a second to tell himself that, regardless of what exactly that kiss meant, he still thinks Shane’s a weird looking dude, all spindly calves and this weird mix of too-lean and out of shape all colliding awkwardly together around Shane’s pale, prominent ribcage, his soft stomach. He’s not… like he’s not… _attracted_ to him. To Shane. That would be weird. That would definitely be weird.  
  
Shane comes back out in his own pajamas, glasses on, and Ryan lets his eyes flick to him in acknowledgement (because he’s not— like it’s not like he’s _mad_. Why should he be mad?) before he looks back at the TV.  
  
Shane sits crosslegged on the other bed and fiddles with his phone on the endtable between their beds, picking it up and scrolling through it before putting it down enough times that Ryan almost laughs out loud and asks what the hell he’s doing when Shane says.  
  
“So, I kissed you. Huh?”  
  
“Uh…” Ryan turns alarmed, dark eyes to him. To Shane and his damp hair and his stupid fishbowl-glasses, huddled over his crossed legs looking somehow both small and cryptid-like — how can anyone be that _tall?_ “Yeah. You did.”  
  
“You kissed me back, though,” Shane says.  
  
Somehow, this had not yet occurred to Ryan. He gapes at Shane, and for a moment they’re frozen, until Shane spreads his hands, palms up in a palely-cartoonish shrug and says “Just saying.”  
  
He drops his hands and holds Ryan’s eyes, and his face is sort of angled away, tipped down, like he isn’t sure he should be looking.  
  
Ryan wants to deny it, but somehow he can’t. He can’t because he doesn’t get that live wire feeling with anything else. Not even the ghosts.  
  
“Okay,” Ryan says. “So I kissed you back.” It sounds more defensive than he wants it to. He doesn’t mean for it to be defensive. He looks for a way to soften it, but all he ends up with is “What do we do, dude?”  
  
“I dunno, _dude_ ,” Shane says and Ryan laughs, a little hysterical.  
  
“I mean… do we just…” he begins. Shane’s really not helping. Shane’s just sitting there looking at him with this far away gaze like he’s seeing straight through Ryan, out the curtained window behind him, and all the way back to the future, in L.A. where things are familiar and, Ryan hopes, a little more normal.  
  
Shane smiles. It’s that quick, sudden laugh where it seems to break out over his face all at once — the one that looks like it surprises Shane, too. “I don’t know,” Shane says, quiet, and he’s back, he’s looking at Ryan, and suddenly Ryan’s not sure he’s hoping for normal.  
  
That scares him.  
  
“Why did you do it?” Ryan asks, quieter, so quiet that Shane glances at the TV for a second before he reaches out grab the remote from Ryan’s bed to shut it off, and the silence that follows is intense, but not exactly uncomfortable.  
  
Shane meets his eyes again, sort of squints at him from behind his glasses. He takes a breath and then says, “Maybe it wasn’t a bit.”  
  
“Okay,” Ryan says, slow. The _but…_ is left unsaid, but Shane picks up on it anyway. They’ve been friends for almost five years, after all. Sometimes, Ryan thinks that Shane might even be one of his best friends, even if he’s not sure he’s one of Shane’s — Shane and his friends have this strange unity that Ryan thinks he can barely even begin to scratch the surface of — even though he considers his own friendships just as intense, only in different ways.  
  
They’re very different people.  
  
_Okay, but…_  
  
“I think,” Shane begins, and it’s the same voice he uses when he’s embarking on something that’s going to sound totally mad, completely absurd… “I think that maybe I just wanted to.”  
  
“Oh.” Ryan says. Somehow this conversation doesn’t feel as terrifying as he thinks it should. Somehow, it feels sort of simple. Until Shane points at him and says “ _You_ kissed me back. Why did _you_ do it?”  
  
_It felt right_ , is the first thing Ryan thinks, followed immediately by _Nope, it felt wrong,_ and suddenly he doesn’t know which is true. “I think I just followed through. Like a sneeze.”  
  
“A sneeze," Shane repeats.  
  
“Yeah, you know, or a handshake. Someone goes to shake hands, and you just…" Ryan reaches out vaguely like he might shake an invisible person's hand. "Do it.”  
  
Shane furrows his brow at him, and all he comes out with is “I’m glad you didn’t sneeze into my mouth.”  
  
“I’m sort of wishing I did.”  
  
“Like a deterrent?” Shane asks, and they’re both almost laughing — just at the cusp.  
  
“Sure,” says Ryan, “I guess, yeah. Yeah, you know, I feel like we’re not addressing the fact that you wanted to kiss me.”  
  
Shane presses his hands together like he’s going to start praying, presses his index fingers against his lips and looks away for a moment, thinking.  
  
“Was that the first time? ‘Cause I wouldn’t put it past _you_ to just go with a completely insane impulse like that the first time it pops into your giant head, you seem like the type of guy to—”  
  
“It’s not the first time,” Shane says, cutting him off, and then, dropping his hands, “Oh don’t give me your ghost-noise eyes, it’s not like I’m mooning after you like— I _must_ have thought it before,” he says, and Ryan can see him backtracking a little. “I mean, it didn’t surprise me, so I must have thought it before.”  
  
“Okay,” Ryan says. “Thanks for not… I guess.”  
  
“Does that also mean ‘thanks for not doing it again’?”  
  
“Well. Yeah,” says Ryan, and his stomach twists and knots unpleasantly. He licks his lips, because his throat is suddenly dry. “I mean, that would be weird, wouldn’t it? It would make things weird, between us.”  
  
“Oh. Sure,” Shane says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. He doesn’t sound _un_ convinced, either. It’s that neutural voice that Ryan hates because he never really knows what it means.  
  
“People don’t kiss their friends.”  
  
“Some do,” Shane says. “I just did. And you—”  
  
“I kissed you back, yeah, I know,” Ryan says, fast, before Shane can say it.  
  
“Why’re you so worried about being normal?” Shane asks, suddenly and Ryan hitches back a little on the bed, eyes darting down, and to the side and anywhere but to Shane’s face, because this feels like it’s getting too deep into real talk, and he’s not the best swimmer.  
  
“I’m not— I just don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”  
  
Shane whispers something like _who cares_ , but he’s tapping out, he’s pulling away. Ryan watches peripherally as Shane pulls himself up against the headboard, facing away from Ryan, long legs stretched out across the mattress.  
  
“I— all right, maybe I care, what’s wrong with that?” Ryan asks, and he hates this, hates that he has to reach out as soon as someone draws away, because he’s so, so afraid of losing people.  
  
And Shane feels perpetually out of reach.  
  
“Nothing, we can forget it. I’m okay with forgetting it.”  
  
“Okay, fine,” Ryan answers, and quietly chastises himself for going along with Shane so easily.  
  
“Okay,” Shane says. Ryan risks a glance up at him, and he consciously has to untangle his fingers where, at some point, he’s fisted them tightly in the sheets. He watches Shane smooth a palm over his own bedspread, pick at some invisible pieces of lint, and then reach for his phone, like this is all completely fine.  
  
Ryan sits still for an inordinate amount of time while Shane unlocks his phone, taps a few things, scrolls. Meanwhile, Ryan’s starting to feel like he’ll never be able to move again, and he’s kind of really starting to hate himself when Shane says, “It’s almost six… you want to try and get some sleep before we have to leave for the airport?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan says, grasping at this, taking it for what it is, a lifeline. Shane reaches out and flicks off the bedside lamp, and it throws the room into shades of blue and grey. Almost morning.  
  
They both huddle down into their respective beds and Ryan closes his eyes and tries desperately to sleep, but he can’t. And judging from the fact that Shane’s not snoring, he’s not either. Or maybe he’s just sleeping lightly. He hasn’t moved for a while, even though Ryan’s tossed and turned about five thousand times. Finally, he goes out on a limb and just says it, says the thing that keeps coming into his head over and over, until it’s like listening to the same three-second clip of EVP until the sounds stop making sense.  
  
“Shane?”  
  
“…Hm.”  
  
“Maybe it’s not that weird.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Ryan takes a breath and half considers just yelling. Damn Shane for acting like he has no idea what this is about. “I just mean… maybe it’s okay… that some people kiss their friends.”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, voice softer. “Maybe.”  
  
And Ryan thinks _If you wanted to, again… I…_ but jesus, he can’t say it. It sits there, crowding his mind, but he can’t say it.  
  
Then Shane starts snoring and Ryan resists the urge to smother him with his own pillow.  
  
Ryan squeezes his eyes shut and presses his face into his own pillow. Eventually he sleeps, but not before his body relaxes. Not before his lips brush accidentally against the backs of his fingers when he turns his head on the pillow.  
  
He’s never been kissed as carefully as Shane had kissed him tonight. In retrospect, there was something uncertain about it, almost self-effacing. Ryan knows it was purposeful, definitely. You don’t lean across two feet of space to kiss someone by mistake, he's sure of that now, but at the same time it felt uncertain enough to seem almost calculated. Like Shane had considered how it should go, mapped it out — length and intimacy and force, like a fucking mathematical problem to be solved.  
  
Jesus, he's fucking weird.  
  
And Ryan wonders if it would still be that careful, if Shane were to kiss him again.


	2. March

_**February, still**_  
  
_Maybe Ryan expected it to be a big thing. And maybe he shouldn’t have expected it, but he did. He expected it to feel different and strange, and for a very short time it does. There’s the hyper-awareness of Shane’s arm brushing his on the plane ride home, and there’s his offer to drop Shane off at his apartment._  
  
_Which Shane declines._  
  
_That’s where it starts. He offers, at LAX, and Shane says no thanks, he’ll get an Über and Ryan doesn’t know if he should wait around with him until his driver shows up or if he should just go home, but in the end TJ offers to split the cost with Shane, and so Ryan really has no reason to stick around._  
  
_It’s not the first time Shane’s declined Ryan’s offer to drive him back from the airport, but it’s not like it’s usual either. And Ryan thought that… this time…_  
  
_Well, they had things to talk about. Didn’t they?_  
  
_They hadn’t talked about it at the motel in Wisconsin. They’d slept for a couple hours, Ryan had complained about sleeping with his contacts in, and then showered, rubbing at his irritated eyes, he’d fished out his glasses, he’d mentioned the cold and how it was always weird to step off the plane into L.A.’s heat, and then it was breakfast, airport, flight, and Ryan couldn’t seem to_ stop _talking, but it wasn’t about the right things. He was just desperately filling the silence, because before all that, Shane had kissed him._  
  
_Shane had kissed him, and he seemed totally content to just leave it at that._  
  
_But yeah, Ryan had expected more. Maybe… maybe he’d even hoped for it._  
  
_And now, tossing his keys down in his own apartment, Ryan leans back against the door and thinks that maybe he hadn’t given Shane a_ chance _to talk, because_ he _couldn’t shut up. Because, yeah, he’s scared of what Shane has to say, too._  
  
_“Well, shit,” says Ryan, but no one’s home to respond._

 

~*~

 

 **March**  
  
There’s something, Shane thinks, about not having snow in winter. Or maybe it’s something about not having snow when you’re feeling like not leaving your house, because when the weather’s as good as it has been for this time of year, he’d like at least some excuse not to leave his apartment without chalking it up to his own indolence.  
  
At least there’s still Unsolved to film. This is a thought he has at a _normal_ hour and not at 3:45 in the morning when his phone goes off on the floor beside his bed.  
  
“Ughjesus,” Shane mumbles and burrows deeper into his pillow, dragging the blanket up over his head to block out the light from the screen.  
  
He thinks maybe it rings again, but he can’t be sure — he might have momentarily fallen back to sleep.  
  
He has to get up when there’s a knock on his door though. It’s not like he can be mad. He untangles himself from his bed, doesn’t bother with any lights, just bumps down the hallway with that weird, woozy, half-asleep feeling and pulls the door open.  
  
The hall light is _so bright_. And there’s Ryan.  
  
“Dude, aren’t you ready? I called your phone,” he says. He looks about fourteen years old in that baseball hat. Shane mumbles something that isn’t words and then turns away to go get his stuff. “I’m ready, just—“  
  
“You’re not even dressed.”  
  
Shane accidentally misjudges the distance and slams his shoulder off the corner to his room and says “ow,” in a pitiful kind of way before going back to his bedroom to get his phone and his bag and _dressed_ , fuck, early morning is hard. You should _still_ be up at 3:45, not _getting_ up. “I am dressed.”  
  
“Yeah, for _bed_. Jesus Christ,” Ryan says, and Shane hears him let himself in and shut the door behind him. It gives him this weird shivery feeling and he just stands for a moment, breathing, before he reaches out to turn his bedroom light on. It practically blinds him.  
  
He gets dressed properly and then brushes his teeth in this brief and perfunctory way, spits into the sink and then just sort of considers his toothbrush before dropping it, still wet from being rinsed, in on top of his other things and closes the backpack up. Ryan’s being _very_ quiet out there.  
  
He steps back out into the living room, which is also, technically the kitchen _and_ the entryway to the front door, because this is Los Angeles, and it’s like living in a matchbox. He starts turning off lights in preparation to leave, but Ryan’s flicked the kitchen light on from his place beside the door and they catch one another's eyes.  
  
_Is he mad?_ Shane wonders. They’re only five minutes late, _if_ that, and they’re driving. They’ll make up the time. Shane will make up the time if Ryan just lets him drive. But he doesn’t look mad, he looks sort of freaked out. Shane laughs. “What are you doing?”  
  
“I’m waiting for _you!_ ” Ryan says.  
  
“Okay, okay, I’m ready.” Shane drops his backpack at Ryan’s feet and sighs deeply before sitting down on the floor to get his boots on. He really should get a bench or something. Anything. It’s a long way down. He glances up as he does up his laces, and Ryan’s sort of squinting deep into Shane’s apartment.  
  
“Wrong residence for ghosts.”  
  
Ryan does this doofus fake laugh as a comment on Shane’s perpetual stupidity, and then gently kick’s Shane’s shin with his sneaker. “Hurry up.”  
  
He pulls himself back up to his full height, grabs his bag, and they both reach for the doorknob at the same time. It’s like an electric shock. They don’t even touch, but both of them snap their hands back like the handle is metal-hot, like there’s a fire out there.  
  
Shane’s first instinct is to laugh at it, but Ryan sort of pulls into himself. Shane watches his shoulders tighten up and he twitches back but doesn’t look away in time to avoid Ryan’s eyes. He realizes he’s sort of cornered him in. His backpack, still dangling from Shane’s fingers drags over the fabric of Ryan’s dark jeans, against the artificial tears in the fabric, against the exposed skin of his knee.  
  
“Hey,” Shane starts, wondering at the way he can sound so certain when he feels the furthest thing from it.  
  
“TJ’s gonna lost his shit,” Ryan says. “We’re so late.”  
  
Really, Ryan whispers it, and it hangs heavily in the air between them. There really is not enough space between them. Shane tears his eyes away and says “Uh. Right,” and sidesteps Ryan, creating almost comical distance as he pulls the door open.  
  
“Lights,” he says to Ryan as he follows Shane out. Ryan reaches out to shut them off, and then they’re both out. Shane locks up, and they don’t look at one another as they make their way down to the car.  
  
It’s on the drive to the shoot that Shane allows himself to revisit the kiss in the car, and the way Ryan looked at him in his hallway this morning, and he thinks _what the fuck have you done?_

 

~*~

 

“Let’s close our eyes,” says Ryan. They are standing in the living room of some old creaky house, surrounded by dust and couches that look like only frumpy little Grandmas have ever sat on them, and Ryan’s clutching his flashlight like he might use it as a weapon. It’s kind of funny, because even though this place is supposed to be Spookytown Central, according to Ryan’s research, they’re literally surrounded by the crew, and Shane doesn’t know how anything, spectral or otherwise, would even manage to be scary in a room that looks like a tea parlour. Like the worst thing that ever happened in here was someone dropped a teacup or forgot to line the plates with doilies or something.  
  
“Let’s close our eyes and maybe, when we open them, we’ll see something.”  
  
“Flashlights, too?” Shane asks.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Should we turn off the flashlights, too?” Shane says. “You’re the one that’s worried about light scaring the ghosts away."  
  
“Oh, yeah, sure, flashlights too,” Ryan says. His voice shakes. Shane looks directly into Mark’s camera with the most long-suffering expression he can possibly muster, as if to say _Can you believe this idiot?_  
  
Their lights click, flicker, and then go out. It’s not that dark. There’s all kinds of little recording lights flashing around them and Ryan’s already got his eyes closed. Shane sighs heavily and is rewarded with that dark glitter of Ryan’s eyes through the half-light as he looks up at him.  
  
“You have to close your eyes, too.”  
  
“I am, I was,” Shane says.  
  
“No you weren’t! Okay, whatever. Count of three?”  
  
“Three,” Shane says, and his voice is joined with Ryan’s. “Two, one.”  
  
He closes his eyes. It’s very quiet. “I think everyone else should close their eyes, too,” Shane says after a few seconds. He looks around to see if anyone’s done it, and they have. Neat.  
  
Initially, it’s kind of fun to be the only person looking around at a room full of people with their eyes closed, but he’s getting bored. It was a bad night to wear his glasses. He keeps getting light glares in them because they’re dirty, and there’s several cameras trained on the two of them, all around. He has half a mind to just say ‘fuck it’ and pocket them, but he knows Ryan would never let him because of consistency, so instead he just resorts to trying to clean them on the hem of his shirt for the nth time before sliding them back on with two hands before Shane looks back at Ryan, who is very still, blind to the room, and waiting, just like he said. He still believes in this nonsense, one hundred percent. He’s insane, clearly. There’s something… if Shane manages to sweep all his disdain and disbelief away and just _look at him_ , he’s left with something in Ryan that he kind of wants. This absolute, unshakeable certainty in something that cannot be proven. It’s anything but innocence, it’s conviction. In something Ryan knows, absolutely, to be true.  
  
Shane has never felt that. Not unless he read the fact in a book first. Ryan’s special, somehow. Shane called him out, once, for worrying about being normal, for worrying about what everyone else thinks but damn, Ryan really doesn’t, when it matters. When it counts, Ryan is true to himself, to the very core and Shane has this sudden impulse to get his mouth down by Ryan’s ear and whisper that he’s doing great… if only to freak him out.  
  
He really thinks about it, but the floorboards are creaky and Ryan would probably hear him, and if he starts screaming, he won’t remember what Shane said, anyway. Which might be for the best but Shane sort of thinks that maybe the people that matter — friends, family — maybe they don’t tell Ryan that enough. That he’s admirable.  
  
Shane thinks he is. He thinks he is so strongly that it’s something he could never say on camera. He doesn’t even think he could say it without Ryan thinking he was being sarcastic because, fuck, sometimes Shane can’t even look directly at him, because…  
  
He tears himself out of the moment because he feels something. For a split second he wonders if they _have_ somehow conjured a tearoom ghost, perhaps bringing them a little plate of sandwiches, between Ryan’s belief and Shane’s contemplation but when Shane looks up he realizes that nope, it’s just TJ, staring at him. He raises an eyebrow at Shane and Shane shakes himself out of his thoughts.  
  
“Come on, ghosts. You’re letting all the Boogaras down by hiding. Make a— make a painting fly off the wall, make the portraits’ _eyes_ move!” he says.  
  
Ryan sighs and opens his eyes. “What? Do you _know_ how hard it would be to pull one of these bad boys off the wall?” Ryan asks, “They’re _huge_ ,” and Shane lets his spine bend back and his knees give a little under the exaggeration of his eye roll as he just turns back towards Ryan and his Ghost Logic ™ to tell him that yes, he _knows, Ryan_ , when TJ says “Okay, guys. We’ve got about forty minutes til sunrise so… maybe we should head upstairs. Let’s wrap this up.”  
  
They discuss what to do, and in the end they decide that it’s easier and faster to just film up their with the GoPros themselves, and let the crew pack up, and meet out on the front lawn when they’re ready. Upstairs is just some mostly empty rooms with patched up windows and even creakier floorboards and a whole lot of dust. Apparently, however, this is where all the death happened, so Ryan’s getting freaked.  
  
Shane’s not. “This would be great to film when the sun breaks through here,” Shane says, peeling at some of the paper covering most of one of the windows, just where it’s peeling back. “Is this east?”  
  
“I don’t know if it’s fucking east, man,” Ryan says, almost laughing, but with that edge to his voice because he wants to take this seriously. Really, Shane should let him more often. He’s about to actually try, straightening up and turning back when Ryan turns sharply on his heel, flashlight directed towards one of the doors off the room.  
  
“You see something?” Shane asks, only to be ignored.  
  
“Who’s there?” Ryan calls.  
  
_Here we go,_ Shane thinks. But he’d just told himself to let Ryan take it seriously. He directs his light at the doorway too. It’s pretty dark. “What is that?” Shane asks, “like a closet or something?”  
  
“I dunno. It looks too big to be a closet, doesn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane agrees, and there’s the slight problem of Shane’s honest voice sounding a lot like his mischief-making voice, which means Ryan misunderstands. He turns back to Shane to give him a look, and that’s when something moves. Scrapes once, across the floor in there. It’s probably an animal, and Shane’s almost startled, but it’s overlapped almost immediately with _Wow, I sure could scare Ryan with this._ Shane adjusts his light and lets his eyes drag from the shadowy doorway to Ryan, knowing his face is now illuminated from below — making his eyes look dark and hollow. He watches Ryan’s get somehow wider in the dim light at Shane’s lack of response, and it’s like the quiet around them starts closing in on Ryan alone. Shane widens his own eyes and swears he can see the colour drain from Ryan’s face.  
  
Fantastic.  
  
“Did you hear that?” Shane asks, voice low and maddeningly calm.  
  
Ryan blinks, and for a second there’s betrayal there, or something like it and he exhales tension, deflates a little, and says “Fuck off, dude.”  
  
Not what Shane expected.  
  
“No,” Shane says, honestly, voice pitched too high and soft all of a sudden, because he sort of regrets the bit, now. “I really did— Ryan—”  
  
Ryan doesn’t want to play this game because he turns and makes for the doorway with his little flashlight, pretending to be fearless, and Shane’s about to let him…  
  
But something feels weird.  
  
It’s stupid but it does. It feels weird, and whatever’s in there, he’s not sure he wants Ryan to see it, because it… it might be bad.  
  
That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t, but he’s had this feeling once before, when he was pretty young. He doesn’t remember why they were at their grandfather’s and not at home, that’s how long ago it was. He was playing hide-and-seek with Scott and a few of their cousins, before hide-and-seek felt like a little kids’ game, so he couldn’t have been older than nine, and he’d run in from heat and sun into the coolness of the shady kitchen and realized that the reason their grandfather was collapsed over his spilled tea and breakfast like that was because he was dead.  
  
Shane had stopped dead, the moment, the memory intensely vivid, even now — the linoleum under his bare feet, fingers freezing where they were scratching at a mosquito bite on his wrist, sweat drying at the back of his neck and sunspots in his eyes. It seemed like an eternity that he’d just stood there, frozen, holding his breath in shock while his heart beat, rabbit-like, in his chest from running, but it was only two or three seconds.  
  
The screen door had slammed shut behind him, startling him, and he whipped his head around, tearing his eyes away from the body. There were footsteps on the porch and Shane had just spun around and went right back out into the sun and took his little cousin’s hand and pulled her away from the house — “Let’s go find Scott” — before she could see. He just remembers thinking that she was younger than him so he should protect her. He remembers that keeping her from seeing their grandfather like that… sort of… not wrong. He wasn’t wrong, just dead, but… he was dead.  
  
That’s what it feels like as Ryan moves towards the hallway. It feels like Shane should protect him. Huh… Weird feeling. He acknowledges it anyway.  
  
It doesn’t mean _ghosts_.  
  
They’ll probably have to edit it out of the footage, the way Shane crosses in two quick strides the space it took Ryan several steps to cover, and drags him back, bodily, by the back of his shirt. Ryan wheels around to face him when he regains his equilibrium, looking fucking _incensed_ and swats him off, and Shane laughs because he really does think Ryan could lay him out if he really wanted to.  
  
“Look, let's— let’s Spirit Box it,” Shane says. “We’ve— look, the sun’s already coming up, the light in here’s all wrong and it’s going to be _impossible_ to patch together when you edit… we’ve filmed rooms like this a thousand times, I just— it’s almost morning, Ryan, I’m getting a headache, I’m sorry, let’s just do this, and go.”  
  
“You always fucking do this,” Ryan says, petulant, _pissed_. Shane’s going to hear about it later, and that’s fine, as long as he can hear about it while he has a cup of coffee in his hands, or Denny’s breakfast or something.  
  
Ryan goes back to the centre of the room to set up the camera on its tripod to get a decent shot for the Spirit Box session, perhaps a little placated that Shane suggested Spirit Boxing at all, and Shane circles the room so that when Ryan stands to face him, Shane will be able to see the doorway without having Ryan’s back to it. Just a precaution, he thinks.  
  
It’s the box that gives them the evidence and later, Shane will think that this is his punishment for all his ghost taunting because now, he will never be able to even remotely convince Ryan that the Spirit Box is hot garbage _nonsense_ ever again. He’ll never even come close, and that means he’ll have to listen to it approximately a _thousand_ more times.  
  
Because Ryan says “I’m Ryan, that’s Shane,” and the fucking box says “ _Ryan_ ” back, Shane’s caught between rolling his eyes and smirking because it’s just a coincidence, it’s the power of suggestion, but Ryan’s eyes are wider than dinner plates anyway.  
  
“It said ‘Ryan.’ ”  
  
“It did,” Shane acquiesces. “And next it’s going to say: bla rhg fak ghh just like it always does.”  
  
“ _Shane_ ,” says the box.  
  
Shane shuts up. He holds Ryan’s eyes and wonders at the sheer amazement he finds there.  
  
Because it’s a coincidence.  
  
“Apple tater?” Shane suggests.  
  
“Shut up,” Ryan tells him, and then to the box “Who are you, why—”  
  
The box lets lets out this awful piercing shriek and they both raise their hands to cover their ears. Shane drops his flashlight and it rolls on the hardwood floor, light bouncing off the smudges on his glasses and fucking with his eyes. The tripod with the GoPro on it, untouched, crashes to the ground and Ryan jumps and says “Holy—!”  
  
There’s a rush of quiet suddenly — no more static sound, even though the box is still on. Shane’s light rolls back and forth, back and forth across the floor, beam throwing shadows wildly over the walls, and maybe that’s why Shane feels a little bit seasick. It sounds a lot like it’s in the room with them, this voice, and it says, soft: “Why are _you_ here?”  
  
Shane laughs, once, barks it out because all the hair on the back of his neck stands up. There’s a rush of something that sounds like a sitcom theme from the Spirit Box which seems to have remembered that it’s supposed to be on, and then a woman’s voice as the static melts back in: “ _Get out_ ,” and then the box goes back to its usual shrieking.  
  
Ryan looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. Shane grabs up the flashlight and the tripod without checking to see if the camera survived. Ryan’s asking him if he heard that like he could’ve missed it, but Shane just says over the noise “Can we turn that fucking thing off?”  
  
“Wait, but did you hear it?” Ryan asks, as he turns the box off, and he’s half shouting over it, and the volume of his voice startles them both in the sudden silence.  
  
“Yeah, I sure fucking did, now let’s go,” Shane finally says, because whatever this is, it’s unsettling. At some point, heading for the exit, Shane catches hold of Ryan’s arm, and he doesn’t really guide him, but they clatter down the steps together and find the crew out on the front lawn, waiting. “We’re leaving now,” Ryan’s saying, breezing past them at the speed of light, and everyone looks at Shane to be the voice of reason but Shane isn’t, this time. He just gestures at the cars and says (still a little too brightly for the situation, to be fair) “We probably should get outta here.”  
  


~*~

 

It’s on the footage. The five of them huddle around Ryan’s laptop in the Waffle House parking lot about a mile and a half away, once they’ve loaded the video up. Even TJ has nothing to say to that. He frowns at the screen, cradling the broken GoPro, as Ryan plays the moment back for the thirtieth time. Teej catches Shane’s eyes over Ryan’s head. Shane just shrugs and takes a drink of his coffee. It’s hard to be rattled out here. The sun’s just rising. It’s one of those pretty Southern California mornings, all soft-lit orange glow. Very mosquito-y, but that’s mostly inessential to the moment, Shane thinks.  
  
Ryan drives him home.  
  
“So, you really think that was a ghost?” Shane asks, clinging to that jaunty skepticism because part of him doesn’t even _know_ how to be on Ryan’s side in all this. “Because, you know, maybe Spirit Boxes are just a little weird like that sometimes. You know, maybe it just glitched out. I’m going to look it up on the internet.”  
  
He’s not quite ready to get out of the car yet because that means standing. Instead, he leans against the passenger door and looks over at Ryan who’s practically buzzing with energy — none of the fear and tension he’d held onto at the shoot. He’s probably never going to sleep again, Shane thinks, first from excitement and later because he’s freaked himself out by watching the footage a thousand more times.  
  
“I’m not even going to listen to you spoil this,” Ryan says. He’s positively beaming. _What_ a _weirdo_.  
  
“I’m just trying to see it from all angles here,” Shane says and Ryan punches him playfully in the arm a couple times until Shane, laughing, relents. “All right, all right,” he says. “… so does this mean the show’s over?”  
  
Something flickers in Ryan’s face — something that troubles him, but it’s gone pretty quickly, like most things Ryan doesn’t want to worry about in the moment. Shane wishes he could take it back.  
  
“No… I mean, I dunno, I don’t think so. Some people won’t be convinced. You’re not.”  
  
“That’s right, I’m not,” Shane agrees, and his eyes flicker between Ryan’s. Ryan takes a breath that he doesn’t let go of, and neither of them speak. Ryan wants to. Shane can see the workings of his mind behind his eyes, but he can’t figure out what to say and that’s okay, because neither can Shane.  
  
Shane moves before Ryan can, because Ryan is quick. He’s fast, impulsive, and he’s got this fire inside him while Shane’s always been slower, stiller, harder to move; like the fucking earth. He doesn’t know how to get close to this without ending up with scorch-marks and not much else.  
  
So maybe that’s why he reaches out and buries his fingers in Ryan’s black hair, through the unnatural stick and pull of product in a way that’s too much. It’s way too much, but it stops Ryan’s movement, stops this all-consuming heat inside him that Shane perceives, notices, even from a distance, but doesn’t know how to withstand, or if he can, or if he wants to.  
  
How can this thing feel new but also like he's been holding on to it for a hundred years?  
  
“Okay, Ry,” Shane says, softly. “I gotta go.”  
  
The moment breaks too quickly. Ryan jerks back like Shane had hypnotized him into stillness and he's only just realizing he's been caught in a snare and Shane simultaneously turns away and reaches for the door handle and steps out, dragging his backpack with him. He hesitates before shutting the door, then says “Try and get some sleep, okay?”  
  
Ryan doesn’t answer. Shane turns and heads for home and tries not to feel like part of him splinters off with Ryan as Shane hears him pull away.


	3. April and June

**April**  
  
The fact, Ryan thinks, is that it’s only a handful of moments. He can be logical, even if Shane doesn’t think he can be. He has to be logical in all his True Crime scripts, and he _is!_ He’s _presenting the facts_. And if those facts sometimes happen to involve aliens or zombies, that’s not _Ryan’s_ fault.  
  
It’s just that those few moments between him and Shane — the ones he doesn’t have any idea how to deal with — they stick with him. They’ve stuck. And he finds himself thinking about it at the weirdest times. And it’s this full-bodied, hot-blooded feeling. It’s not just in his head, it’s like he’s thrown right back — stomach flipping, wild skipping of his heart and all — to that moment where Shane looked down at him in his entryway and Ryan had pressed his shoulders into the solidity of the wood door behind him. When Shane kissed him in Ryan’s car, and everything was so cold, but Shane’s mouth _wasn’t_. When Shane said 'Okay, Ry. I gotta go,' like Ryan was _keeping_ him there.  
  
He’s never called him Ry before. No one’s ever called him Ry because it sounds like something you’d grind up at the old… mill or something, not… but now it’s a _name._ Or it was, for a moment. It was something Ryan was _called_.  
  
And they haven’t talked about it again. They haven’t talked about _any_ of it. He thinks that Shane’s probably maybe already forgotten about the whole thing. That’s what he thinks some of the time, but other times he thinks he catches Shane looking at him like… but no, Shane’s probably forgotten, and Ryan’s just left agonizing over the details of things that happened weeks ago, like an idiot.  
  
None of this would be weird, Ryan thinks, if Shane hadn’t kissed him in the car first.  
  
Jesus, why can’t he just stop thinking about it?  
  
That’s what he makes his mind up to do on a sunny Monday morning in April. He’s just going to be done dealing with this because he’s making mountains out of molehills. Which is precisely why he can stand close enough to Shane that their elbows keep knocking in the sound booth, as they listen to the clearer EVP recordings, and not feel weird about it. He doesn’t feel weird. It’s why Ryan can look up at Shane — as he goes all  logistician, eyes cast down and far away, like he does when he’s waxing poetic about _physics_ or something — and think _yeah, this is totally normal._  
  
And maybe it is. Normal, that is. Until Ryan pulls his headphones off and hears himself say, entirely unprompted, “Hey, have you thought about that kiss?”  
  
Shane’s a little thrown, looking over at him, and Ryan can see him going through his memory, and he’s about to be pissed, a little, because it was _Shane_ who initiated it — Ryan keeps falling back on that — it was Shane who initiated it, and then it’s Shane who says, with complete honestly, “Wait, was there a kiss?” and Ryan realizes he’s trying to remember if Ryan talked about it in the script for the Supernatural episode they’d just filmed.  
  
“I mean…”  
  
“Oh. Wisconsin,” says Shane, like that’s what he’s filed it under: Wisconsin. Which kind of sucks, because Ryan had filed _his_ memory, highlighted and fucking flagged, under _‘Shane’._  
  
And maybe that’s the difference and, suddenly, Ryan is _terrified_ , but he says: “Yeah. Wisconsin.”  
  
“Uh…” Shane glances at the boards, then reaches out and shuts the mics off, and stops the EVP recording for good measure, and pulls off his own headphones, setting them down carefully on the soundboard. “Why this, all of a sudden?”  
  
“It’s— I think it isn’t. It’s not… I’ve been…” Ryan can feel his face heating up, ears burning, and starts wishing that he brought this up in a more open space because he’s starting to feel a little claustrophobic.  
  
“Okay, look…”

~*~

Shane’s gone very still. He’s holding himself carefully, like if he doesn’t he’s just going to crumple like one of those string toys that you press and they just collapse all over the place, boneless.  
  
“Okay,” Ryan says “look…” and Shane doesn’t think he wants to do this, but also, _Jesus,_ also…  
  
Ryan’s talking and Shane has to force himself to catch up. “Maybe you’re not thinking about it, but it’s starting to drive me crazy, like _literally_ crazy, so I just… I don’t know, I felt like— in the car, I felt like I— not the first time, the second time, when I didn’t kiss you, I felt kind of like I should, or like you wanted me to, but you stopped me… and at your place the other day, I… what’s going on, dude?”  
  
“I really don’t—” Shane starts, and Ryan cuts him off, which drives him crazy, but he shuts up and lets him get it out.  
  
“I just feel like— kind of— like we should— like, why don’t we just… I dunno, get it over with?”  
  
There’s a beat. Silence settles around them and Shane feels his teeth slide together as he works through this. “Get it over with,” Shane repeats, and suddenly Ryan’s dark eyes are fixed on his and all he can think is _Uh oh._  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says.  
  
“No, wait,” Ryan cuts him off again, talking faster and faster. “Maybe you don’t need some kind of— like maybe it’s just a closure thing, like I was expecting something to happen— but I, just… I need to-- it’s getting all distorted in my head, I think, and I thought that if you— fuck. I need you to… like I think you should just kiss me again. So I can stop— trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to _do_ with that.”  
  
Shane just looks at him. The silence that falls between them now — thick and close because of the soundproof booth and… it’s like they’re gasping all of the breathable air out of the room, and trying to look like they’re not drowning. He feels sort of shaky. A little desperately, he says “Ryan,” and it lilts with the edge of a laugh that isn’t, because it isn’t funny.  
  
_Ryan,_ he hears himself think, but he doesn’t know how to continue. Because Shane needs this moment to break, and it _doesn’t_ and here is Ryan— fucking _Ryan_ , one of his best friends, just holding his ground even though he just asked Shane to kiss him again to ‘get it over with’ and Shane wonders… if he does. Kiss him. If he’ll ever be able to stop after that.  
  
And if Ryan will want him to.  
  
This isn’t how Shane wanted it to go, and he’s just letting himself realize now that he wanted it to go any way at all. He just knows that this isn’t it. He’d tried for something in the car on the morning Ryan drove him home and fucked up and now it’s… now Ryan wants to ‘get it over with’, and what does that even mean?  
  
“Won’t that just make it worse?” he finally asks.  
  
“ _I_ don’t know,” Ryan says, and Shane hears the sharp intake of breath at the end of his sentence. “Jesus… doesn’t it bother you?”  
  
“I… I’m not going to kiss you in the sound booth.”  
  
“Oh, so it’s— it’s the location, then, not the… the other factors?” Ryan asks, and Shane has to laugh.  
  
“Other factors like that it’s… us?” Shane asks.  
  
Ryan squints at him slowly. Kind of cocks his head. It’s a look Shane finds endearing, when it’s not directed at him. It says _what the fuck are you doing?_  
  
“You… is it _us_ or is it… like is it us or is it that _we_ don’t do this. Individually. You and I don’t. Kiss our friends who are also dudes.”  
  
“I have no idea,” Shane says.  
  
“Because you did this first, dude,” Ryan reminds him. Again. “I’m… it’s not fair to just do that and then not—“  
  
“No, I know,” Shane says, quickly. “I know, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”  
  
“That’s _not_ what I’m saying, I just… no, it’s not that, it’s more like— I mean it was kind of intense, kind of. Wasn’t it? Ah fuck this conversation, this is so terrible.”  
  
“No,” Shane says, very soft now. He drags a hand through his hair and his fingers are shaking. He’s sort of shaking. He can feel it in his knees. “I mean, yes, it was. It was.” He meets Ryan’s eyes and this moment is intense too, highly charged. “Not here,” Shane finally says. “This isn’t great.”  
  
“The location, you mean,” Ryan says, and Shane thinks he’s attempting a joke, but neither of them laugh.  
  
Shane searches his eyes for too long, then finally says “Okay… we should get back to this.”  
  
Ryan blinks. Hurt maybe. _Sorry_ , Shane thinks desperately, _Fuck, Ryan, sorry sorry sorry_. But Ryan’s already pulling his headphones back on, and they do. They get back it, but they’re not standing close enough to touch anymore, even accidentally.  
  
Shane notices.

~*~

It’s at the end of the day, and Shane packs up to leave at the speed of light and Ryan bites his lip and tries to focus on whatever’s on his screen, but he isn’t even seeing it.  
  
“Hey,” Shane says, and his shin collides with the side of Ryan’s thigh and his hand catches the arm of Ryan’s chair, spinning him to face him a little. He doesn’t meet Ryan’s eyes as he says “Why don’t you ask me later?”  
  
He asks it like they were just having this conversation. Like it’s the most casual thing in the world, and if Ryan didn’t fucking know him, he’d think he hadn’t been rehearsing it in his head just like that. But Ryan does know him, and he wonders if that’s why Shane’s been so quiet and  he almost smirks. Almost. Because then Shane meets his eyes, and Ryan hears it the way Shane means it which is _why don’t you ask me to kiss you later_ and Ryan has to take a breath.  
  
“Night,” Shane says, standing. He swings that stupid baseball cap onto his head and squeezes Ryan’s shoulder a little before he’s gone and Ryan hates, _hates_ this wild tailwind Shane’s left him in, but his heart’s beating hard with this thrill, because he doesn’t actually hate it at all.  
  
But in the end, Ryan doesn’t ask.  
  
**June**  
  
They both show up to the same Friday drinks night almost by accident, but it’s BuzzFeed so you can kind of expect almost everybody all of the time. Their office has occupied like three of the bar tables, and they’re certainly the loudest group in the room, and Ryan’s several people deep in one back corner so Shane leaves him to it. He’s called by the promise of beer and a plate of nachos that exists at the closest table, and it’s like musical chairs for a while — the people he’s talking to keep switching and Shane’s just drunk enough to feel deeply in love with all of these lovely people he works with, and someone’s arm is around his shoulders and there’s this clink of jewellery right next to his ear, and someone’s perfume and Shane’s not even sure Ryan’s still at the fucking bar but he sends the text anyway. Because it's been burning inside him for months.  
  
_Why don’t you take me somewhere so I can kiss you_  
  
And he tries to pretend he’s not waiting. He’s trying to pretend he isn’t scared because that’s the persona he puts out there. He’s Shane Madej. He’s not scared of anything. Sometimes, he almost convinces himself that it’s true.  
  
Someone touches his shoulder and Shane takes a second to finish his sentence before he twists back, and it’s Ryan. Ryan’s holding his own phone against his ribs where it’s glowing like a secret and he doesn’t even have to say anything. Shane just looks at him and his heartbeat flies up into his throat where it tries to choke him. He stands up without a word to Ryan, to anyone, and he follows him through the crowd, through people they know, through people they don’t know.  
  
They step outside and the humidity clenches around them, holding back rain. It clings to Shane’s skin. They don’t go far. He probably would have fucking followed him into tomorrow if that’s how long it took, but he’s glad he doesn’t have to.  
  
Alcohol buzzes through his limbs, but his head is clear. His eyes are clear, and so are Ryan’s when he turns back and takes this shaking breath and says, “You know, I hope you didn’t have high expectations or something, because apparently the sound booth wasn’t good enough for you and so, now that I’m considering, a back alley probably isn’t that great either, but I actually think that maybe this one is kind of nice. There’s the— the string lights there. We probably won’t get mugged.”  
  
“Oh yeah,” Shane says, and even though Ryan's floundering a little, he’s right. The bar lights stretch across the far end of the alley — those completely impractical open glass bulbs. If he didn’t think everything was so fucking beautiful in this moment, including Ryan, including the determined, uncertain way Ryan’s looking at him, including the humidity that clings to Shane’s skin until he can feel the beads of sweat slide down his spine, including the way Ryan’s hair is damp at his temples. He steps forward and both their hands come up at once, uncertain. They both hitch back a little, but then Shane lets his fingertips brush Ryan’s cheeks, and Ryan curls his fingers around Shane’s wrists and squeezes and Shane pushes him gently back into the brick wall behind him and kisses him again.  
  
And Ryan opens his mouth beneath Shane’s, and this time it’s longer. It’s longing. It’s Ryan who lets go of Shane’s wrists and pulls him close by the hips and the air smells like electricity, but the storm holds itself in. Shane desperately wants it to rain.

~*~

It does, later. It rains after they get to Shane’s apartment, and Ryan’s fingers slip haltingly down Shane’s sides, skin clinging to skin in the damp. It rains hard enough that there’s thunder, and it shakes through Shane’s chest as he laps at the pulse in Ryan’s throat like he can drink him in that way, and he tastes like sweat and the chemical bite of aftershave on Shane’s tongue, and it fucking sets him alight. Shane half expects to see the shock of sparks, like electricity, between them, at every place their bodies separate.  
  
What they do spills out organically in the switch between hushed voices and raucous laughter and the point where their vocalizations stop being words and start being desperate, drawn up from the depths of them, and Shane pins Ryan’s body down on the mattress, and presses the sounds he makes into the back of Ryan’s neck, against the top of his spine. The sheets are damp with the air and their bodies, and he presses himself up between Ryan’s thighs until their cocks slide together, caught between Ryan’s stomach and the cup of Shane’s palm and everything is slick and simple. They weren’t prepared, they weren’t there yet, so it’s never penetrative (as they say on the internet) but, God, if it’s not some of the best sex Shane’s ever had.  
  
Afterwards, after Shane pulls away and Ryan rolls over onto his back they stare at the ceiling for a while, feeling one another’s breathing, because the bed’s really not big enough for them both. Shane waits for the fear to kick in, the regret, the anxiety. But it doesn’t. And then Ryan says, “Well that was fine, I guess,” and Shane dissolves into laughter. He rolls over and presses this smile, teeth and lips, against Ryan’s shoulder and Ryan muffles his own laughter against the back of his hand.  
  
Eventually they come down and Ryan says “I don’t even know why we’re being quiet _now_ ,” because they hadn’t been before and they’re both gone again and fuck, it’s so easy.  
  
“This is nice,” Shane says against Ryan’s throat. He’s sort of draped himself over him, despite Ryan’s complaints that he’s heavy, and Shane stays because Ryan doesn’t push him off. “Easy.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan says. Almost sighs it. “I… it’s gonna be easy tomorrow, too, right? Because you’re my best friend and if—”  
  
“It will be,” Shane tells him, fast. “Anyway, _everyone_ knows that if you don’t go to sleep, there’s no morning after. It just stays tonight.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Ryan tells him and then, eventually. “So… should I…” 

~*~

“So… should I…” _…go?_  
  
“It’s still raining,” Shane says.  
  
“Oh yeah.”  
  
“So.”  
  
Ryan takes a breath and exhales so much tension. Because that’s the answer. It’s so certain, steady. Like Shane. “Okay.”  
  
So he stays. And they sleep. And then it’s tomorrow.  
  
Saturday morning comes and it is blindingly clear. Shane gets mostly dressed and goes to do something about coffee, and it’s a little bit awkward, but maybe that’s okay, too. Sometimes that’s fine. That’s what Ryan’s thinking as he pulls on yesterday’s pants then sits heavily back on the bed to frown at his t-shirt because it smells sort of like alcohol and sweat. From the kitchen, Shane calls that they’re out of coffee and reappears in the doorway, and he is very pale and angular in the sunlight filtering in. His hair is wild. Ryan wants to drag his fingers through it and— “I can run out and get something or we could… you want to go for breakfast?”  
  
“Are you asking me on a date, Big Guy?” Ryan asks him, glad he’s the one to get in the first playful jab.  
  
Shane raises his eyebrows and leans too casually to be casual against his door frame and it’s just this side of ridiculous. Ryan holds his breath so he doesn’t laugh before the bit’s finished.  
  
“Well, if you insist.”  
  
The laugh breaks easily from Ryan’s chest. “If _I_ insist? You’re the one— _you start it_. You start it _every time!_ ”  
  
“So start it,” Shane says, and it’s not a bit anymore. He organizes himself into regular, poor-posture Shane, and the slope of his shoulders and the softness in his eyes is so familiar, so real. “Whatever you want.”  
  
Ryan’s breath shakes through his lungs like stones in a tin can. Even so, he can’t quite make the smile disappear, even in the time it takes for Shane to go to his closet, find a shirt and pull it on. “Let’s get breakfast,” Ryan says, followed by, “My shirt is gross.”  
  
“High maintenance already,” Shane quips with his back to him, digging through a few things in the closet before he comes to stand in front of Ryan, motions for him to stand, and Ryan does. Shane pulls the shirt on over Ryan's head and before Ryan can even begin figuring this situation out Shane kisses him, and it is sweet and careful and lingering, and Ryan can’t _believe_ he has to deal with a kiss like this at the same time as he works his arms through the sleeves of Shane’s shirt.  
  
He finally manages, but it takes a long time before he lets Shane pull back.  
  
“No one’s ever kissed me while I was getting _dressed_ before,” Ryan says. “Usually it’s undressed.”  
  
“I like to surprise,” Shane tells him, and his voice is a little too gentle through his smile. Ryan pushes him towards the doorway so that he doesn’t just kiss him again. “Come on, idiot,” he says. “Let’s go.”

 

 _I live inside you and you live in me_  
_And I live inside you and you live in me_  
_Nothing's gonna change that, dear_  
_Nothing's gonna change that, dear_  
  
_Not even being apart_  
_We travel right to the heart of this_  
_Hot, scary summer_  
_Oh, Lord_  
_A hot, scary summer_

\- Villagers,  _Hot Scary Summer_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, first of all, thank you. Truly, thank you.
> 
> Second of all, I can't BELIEVE I finished it in three chapters like I said, and not 5,000 as usual.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be part of a (very hopefully) three-chaptered piece.
> 
> The title comes from the song (of the same title) by Villagers who are an excellent band and you should all go listen to them.


End file.
